Maine $5.50 Massachusetts 6.68 Connecticut 6.50 Rhode Island 5.87 New York 5.85 New Jersey 5.00 California 6.00 Colorado 6.00 Kansas 5.17 Wisconsin 5.17 Minnesota 6.00 All cities 5.24 FOOTNOTES: [23] Third Annual Report of New York Bureau of Labor, p. 162. These are Mr. Peck's figures; but the United States report gives the average for skilled labor as $5.85 per week, and adds that the unskilled earns far less. [24] Ibid. p. 165. [25] New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Third Annual Report, p. 27. VII. GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR ENGLISH WORKERS. So far as opportunity is concerned, it is the United States only that offers a practically unlimited field to women workers, to whom some four hundred trades and occupations are now open. Comparison with other countries is, however, essential, if we would judge fairly of conditions as a whole; and thus we turn first to that other English-speaking race, and the English worker at home. At once we are faced with the impossibility of gathering much more than surface indications, since in no other country is there any counterpart to our admirable system of investigation and tabulation, each year more and more systematic and thorough. In spite of the fact that factory laws had their birth in England, and that the whole system of child labor--the early horrors of which find record in thousands of pages of special reports from inspectors appointed by government--has been through their means modified and improved, there are, even now, no sources of information as to numbers at work or the characteristics of special industries. The census must be the chief dependence; and here we find the enormous proportions to which the employment of women has attained. In 1861 these returns gave for England and Wales 1,024,277 women at work. Twenty years later the number had doubled, half a million being found in London alone. This does not include all, since, as Mr. Charles Booth notes in his recent "Labor and Life of the People," many employed women do not return their employments. Mr. Booth's work is a purely private enterprise, assisted by devoted co-workers, and by trained experts employed at his own expense. For the final estimate must be added general census returns, and the recent reports on the sweating-system in London and other English cities.